


The Secrets That We Hide

by medvin



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Coming Out, FTM Dan Howell, First Meetings, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Social Anxiety, Trans Character, Trans Dan Howell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-03-04 12:49:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13365057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medvin/pseuds/medvin
Summary: Dan is the new kid in school.Phil is the quiet kid who is always doodling.What is Dan hiding and why is Phil always disappearing?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> I just wanted to point out that I basically don't know anything about any school system so sorry for any inaccuracies. Also English isn't my first language.
> 
> Enjoy!

Dan sat on the toilet lid trying to regain a normal breathing pace. With his legs brought up to his chest, he replayed his mum reassuring him that it was going to be alright ten minutes earlier in the car. But he was now late for his first class because he couldn’t find the right classroom and felt too awkward to ask anyone for help.

Starting a new school probably ranked top five in worst possible scenarios to ever happen to him. The pro would be that no one would refer to him with his birth name or wrong pronouns. That, and him getting a bigger room. 

He needed to ask someone for help. He walked out in the corridor, which was mostly empty since the first period had already started. He did, however, see a somewhat nerdy looking guy beside one of the lockers.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for classroom 307 and I am completely lost”, He said scratching the back of his neck. Two green eyes looked back at him.

“Oh, it’s on the second floor just to the right!” 

He thanked him and was on his way. That wasn’t so bad, maybe not everyone at this school was massive dicks. A bit of a change from his last school. His teacher, however, did not look impressed when he entered the classroom. 

“You are late”, he said simply, with a heavy Irish accent. Dan was so nervous at this moment that he dropped his notepad that he had taken out from his backpack earlier.

“Sorry, had a stroke”, he said without really thinking. The classroom was silent, and every one of his classmates looked horrified. That was when a blonde girl in the corner burst out laughing. 

Because of the late arrival and inappropriate joke, he had ended up with detention within the first fifteen minutes in his new school. The day was not going as smoothly as he had hoped. 

The blonde girl turned out to be called Louise and turned out to be very funny. She told him Mr. Anderson lacked any sense of humor and did not like people arriving late to his lessons. Apparently someone had been twenty minutes late once and he had spent the remaining part of the lesson lecturing them about the importance of respect. Dan’s original plan was to draw as little attention towards himself as possible this year, and he had already failed horribly. His teacher probably hated him now and his classmates must have thought he was some kind of weirdo. 

The math lesson went by very fast, which may have something to do with him whispering with Louise the whole lesson. He hadn’t expected to make any friends, but she was surprisingly easy to talk to. He didn’t really have that much of a problem talking with people, he just didn’t particularly enjoy it. But Louise and he happened to share a lot of similar humor and appeared to have loads of awkward moments to tell him about.

When the bell rang they hurried out of the classroom. Dan tried to hide in the group of teenagers practically running towards the exit. He did not want to be lectured by Mr. Anderson about the correlation between being on time and respect. Or anything else for that matter. He had constantly shot angry gazes at Dan during the lesson which led to him believe that his teacher would be horrible at cards against humanity if he was so easily offended.

“I still can’t believe you said that in front of the whole class”, Louise proclaimed once they had reach out of earshot of Mr. Anderson. 

Dan just felt like facepalming. “I don’t know why I said that, and everyone looked so horrified.” 

Louise then preceded to imitate them by opening her mouth slightly and crinkling her eyebrows together. 

“Yeah, just like that!” Dan said. 

Louise then realized that she needed to get going. “Nice meeting you, Dan. See you around!”

Dan waved and smiled back at her. One lesson done just two to go. Hopefully, he wouldn’t get in more trouble. 

The next lesson was uneventful. Everyone in his physics class looked like they wanted to be literally anywhere else at the moment. Mrs. Tate, as the teacher was called, also had a really monotone voice which did not increase his attention level.

Walking into the men’s restrooms was always a little scary. Even though Dan was pretty confident that he was passing, that with having been blessed with only a slightly shorter height than what was average for boys his age and a masculine jaw-line. That being said he still had a high-pitched voice that he tried to get rid off by voice exercises, that still hadn’t helped that much. But sounding like a twelve-year-old boy was better than sounding like a girl anyway. Another problem was that he had a pretty big chest that was being disguised by a binder and an oversized hoodie that he hoped got the job done. Even if this was the case he couldn’t help constantly tugging on the fabric on the front of the hoodie.

With the next thing on his schedule being lunch, to say that he was terrified would be a big understatement. He ended up with eating an apple while hiding in a bathroom stall. He seemed to spend a lot of his time there this day. Lucky for him the restrooms were basically deserted, otherwise, people may have wondered why someone was making chewing noises in a bathroom.

The next lesson was a double in theatre. The only lesson that he actually looked forward to. Walking in he constantly got the feeling that people looked at him. The theatre lesson was in a classroom where all the benches had been pushed to one side of the room. Students were sitting on chairs in the circle which reminded him of kindergarten. Dan took a chair close to the exit and felt very uncomfortable. Why did they have to sit in the circle? It was almost impossible to not make awkward eye contact with the person opposite. Trying to avoid it looked even more silly, he thought as he was trying desperately to pretend that the plant by the window was incredibly interesting. 

This was when the teacher arrived. She was a short dark haired woman that had a sort of enthusiastic energy around her. “Hello, class! Today we have a new addition as you may have noticed. Do you want to introduce yourself?” she asked and gave a nod in Dan’s direction. 

“Ehm, yeah. I’m Dan and I just moved here.” Smooth, he thought sarcastically to himself. This was a drama class. Improvisation was meant to be their strength. At least the other students gave him friendly smiles.

The class turned out to be pretty chill. They were divided into groups where they practiced different famous dialogues from movies and plays but this time trying to portray it with a different feeling. Dan ended up with a guy with blond hair and glasses who was called Tyler. He was really nice and passionate in his acting. Maybe he wouldn’t have to be lonely after all. His old friends were not very loyal. They constantly ditched him and never cared about him unless there was something interesting going on in his life.

When the class was over he had detention. He would much rather go home and play video games, but he guessed that was what you get for being an awkward mess. The classroom was filled with a very diverse set of people. 

It was one guy at the back, nodding to the beat in his earphones. He looked like a type of person that always had their hand uncomfortably close to his crotch. Then there was a girl with her hood up who looked like she was asleep.

The person that really caught Dan’s attention was a black-haired boy who sat in front of him. He had foxes on his shirt and appeared to be doodling on a piece of paper. Dan couldn’t help but wonder how he had gotten himself detention. 

The instruction they had gotten was just to work with their homework and no talking. Dan had only his math stuff with him and figured that he would just have to work on that. He did not want to fall behind the first thing he did. 

Having understood nothing of the lesson earlier made finishing his homework easier said than done. He had just started on a particularly difficult problem about trigonometry when the boy with the fox-shirt turned around with an annoyed expression on his face. 

“Could you stop that?” He asked pointing at Dan’s fingers that was just in the process of tapping against the table. He hadn’t even realized he had done that. 

“Oh, sorry”, Dan said and put his hands in his lap. 

The boy didn’t say anything else after that so Dan had assumed that the conversation was over. He stared down at his math book again but giving up after roughly five seconds. That was when he caught glimpse of the guy’s paper. He appeared to be drawing different shapes and writing something underneath them that Dan was unable to read. 

Dan tugged at the front of his hoodie and tapped on the boy’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”

He looked surprised but not angry. “Oh, I’m writing Halloween puns”, he said and smiled brightly. “Do you want to hear one?”

“Yeah, sure!”, Dan couldn’t help but laugh. He didn’t know what he was expecting but that was definitely not it.

The boy let his gaze travel up and down his paper as if he was deciding which one to choose. “Okay, I got one. What is a vampire’s favorite fruit?”

Dan took a deep breath and leaned back into his chair. “A blood orange.”

“A neck-tarine.”

“Oh, for fuck sake!” Dan said and put his face into his hands. 

The boy just laughed while putting his tongue between his teeth. 

That was how he met Phil Lester.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back!! sorry for taking so long to update, i've been very busy with school. thanks for all the kudos and comments on the last chapter, they mean the world to me.

Dan didn’t see Phil the next day. For some reason, he couldn’t get that boy out of his head. It was something endearing about him that Dan couldn’t put his finger on. He had tried to find him on social media but hadn’t yet succeeded. He was such a stalker, he thought to himself and sighed. 

He did see Louise again the next day, however. They were in the same geography class that was just before lunch and she had actually asked him if he wanted to sit with her. She had also turned out to be good friends with Tyler, the blonde guy from Dan’s drama class, and were right in the middle of sharing their experiences about shitting themselves. 

“As I got to the lift, I felt it coming. I was just like ‘oh my god, oh my god’. Then I ran into the toilet!” Louise said, Tyler sat with his hand pressed to his mouth.

“I didn’t even take my knickers down, I just had a skirt on, I was like ‘ugh, oh god’. It was I just full on”, Louise continued and made a moving motion with her arm. “It was like a colonic.”

Dan and Tyler just laughed wildly. People by the nearby tables just turned around and looked at them. Some of the people sitting the closest had expressions of disgust as if they couldn’t understand why someone could be talking about pooping yourself when people were eating. 

“Wait you didn’t even shit yourself!” Tyler then exclaimed to which even more people turned their head in their direction. 

Louise just gave him an empty expression. “Look...”

“I think that qualifies”, Dan said.

Tyler then turned to Dan. “Do you have any pooping stories that you want to share with us?”

Dan just laughed. “No, I don’t think I have shit my pants since I was a kid.”

“Ugh, that’s boring!” Tyler said and rolled his eyes. “Any awkward stories non-related to pooping?”

Louise just laughed. “Did I tell you what Dan said when he was late for class yesterday?” 

Tyler shook his head to which Dan proceeded to tell the story. Dan felt at home with these people. They had been nothing but welcoming of him in their friendship group, and Dan had never felt this at ease before. As a generally awkward and insecure guy, it felt good, not having to uphold the perfect persona that so many others did. Tyler and Louise were just themselves, sharing embarrassing moments from their life without any shame. 

Dan had been hoping that he was going to have some classes with Phil that day, but he had no such luck. He had been tempted to ask Louise if she knew who he was but decided against it. Instead, he went home and played video games for the rest of the day. He could do his homework some other time. 

By Thursday he had almost accepted that Phil was probably some sort of alien or spirit that could only be seen at will. Or more likely wasn’t in his year. That was when he noticed the black-haired boy sitting by the window in his French classroom. He appeared to be sitting alone, doodling again. Dan figured this was his chance to get to know him. He hadn’t had time to speak that much to him when they had detention. He had seemed to be in a rush and ran out as soon as it was over, leaving Dan feeling oddly disappointed. 

“Can I sit here?” Dan asked.

Phil just gestured to the seat next to him not lifting his gaze from his doodle. 

“Thanks”, Dan said as he sat down. “Is the teacher very strict?”

Dan could see the end of the corner of Phil’s mouth twitch. “Well, he sure is a bit…eccentric.”

Dan wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what that meant. 

French class turned out to be entirely something else. One of the first things they did was to practice hearing comprehension, which, to be fair, wasn’t Dan’s strongest point. But to make things worse Dr. Brown, the teacher, had decided that it was a good idea to communicate when there was a comma with “woof”, “meow” when there was a full stop and “ding-dong” when it was a new paragraph. 

That was when Dan had turned to Phil with eyes that were screaming “Is this real life”. Phil had just nodded in response with an expression that showed that this was something that Dan should get used to. 

At the end of the lesson they had been divided into pairs to work on a project writing about a French-speaking country. He had ended up with Phil and had tried not to show his happiness too much. 

Dan had planned to ask him if he wanted to sit with him at lunch, but Phil had disappeared without a trace. He figured that it would be good to get to know him a bit since they would be working on a project together. He barely knew anything about him except, his name, that he liked stupid puns and that he probably liked Pokémon. The latter coming from that Dan had seen him doodling Pikachu during the lecture. Yes, and the doodling. He barely lifted his eyes from his pen and paper. 

When Dan got home that afternoon he had spent countless hours in front of his laptop. He figured he could treat himself with that. He could do the work tomorrow.

Before he knew it the room had gotten darker. The boxes from the move standing unopened in the corner looked like an ominous shape that would attack him in his sleep. That was when his phone vibrated. 

It was a text from Louise that said:

Louise  
Wanna go to zig zag café with me and tyler?  
(18.05)

Dan smiled to himself as he grabbed the binder that was laying on his floor, which he had taken off immediately after he had gotten home. He had learned the hard way that keeping it on for too long was really not worth it. At all. 

“Mum, I’m going out!” Dan shouted as he ran down the stairs towards the front door. 

“Put on a jacket, it’s very cold”, she replied. 

He was definitely not putting on a jacket, a decision he regretted about ten minutes later when he the wind was blowing towards him as he was riding his bike. He had a bit of a lump in the stomach over not finding the place, and multitasking by looking at google maps while cycling turned out to be more dangerous than he had anticipated. Something that he had realized when he had almost crashed into a car. 

Eventually he did find the right place and were greeted by Louise’s and Tyler’s smiling faces. It hadn’t taken long after they had sat down that Tyler was deep into telling them about some drama in his German Class. 

“- and then she turned to me and said “but we all know we can’t leave Eric alone in the changing room with Tyler””, Tyler said and finished with his mouth opened, like he himself couldn’t believe she said that. 

Louise had dropped her spoon and her eyes were wide. “Oh my god, did she really say that?”

Dan just felt confused. “I don’t understand who is Eric and what did she mean?”

Louise looked at Tyler as if asking for permission and got a nod in response. “Last year Tyler told his friend Laura that he thought Eric was cute, like in confidence. But then she basically outed him to the whole school.”

Dan felt all the pieces falling to place. It was a bit like a relief really. He had always known himself that he liked boys and it wasn’t actually something he felt weird about before coming out as transgender to his parents. It wasn’t anything that he had realized could cause a problem until then. But he felt like having someone to share some of your experience was always good. He had never been brave enough to share any of these personal things with his old friends. 

“You don’t have a problem with me being gay, do you?” Tyler asked quietly as if he expected Dan to lash out any second. He had never seen Tyler seem so small. His usually bubbly and confident personality had vanished, and he seemed strangely fragile. 

“No, no of course not!” Dan rushed to say, not wanting Tyler to believe that his slow answer had anything to do with him being a homophobe. “I’m just shocked that your friend would do that do you, it’s awful.”

Tyler just sighed and took a sip of his coffee. “Yeah, I know. It was a bit of a mess after that. But I wouldn’t have gotten friends with Louise otherwise.” 

“Yeah, but maybe that would have been for the best”, Louise joked. 

As Dan took the bike home he felt oddly content. He felt a warm feeling in his stomach even though he felt really bad about what had happened to Tyler. He couldn’t even imagine how he would feel if him being transgender came out. Everyone in his old school knew of course, and it had been hard with people constantly using the wrong pronouns and name. His mum getting a new job in a new town was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. Right now, all he felt was that he didn’t want anyone to know, like ever. 

As he laid in bed, trying to sleep that night, he felt a strange pull that he wanted to confide in Tyler about his sexuality. Just to let him know that he wasn’t alone and that he had someone who understood. He took out his phone and was just about to press on Tyler’s name in his contacts. But at the same time, he didn’t feel quite ready yet. 

Maybe some other time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so that was chapter 2. wasn't that happy with it but i hope you enjoyed it anyway. (and pls feel free to comment or leave kudos if you did).


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry, guys, don't really have an excuse for not updating. Hope you'll like this chapter anyway!

”Dan, could you please answer why it is that the muscle-wall is thicker on the left side of the heart?” Miss Wade asked. She strolled to the front of her desk and crossed her arms while she leaned against the table. She had a round face and was a petite woman, but at the same time radiated an aura that made you not want to mess with her.

Dan looked around as all the students turned around to look at him. He had been late to class again and had taken a seat in the back. He had managed to oversleep and had thrown on his clothes as his heart was beating fast in his ribcage. He had not realized the long-sleeved shirt he had chosen had an orange stain from spilled juice. 

The sound of Miss Wade tapping the whiteboard pen against the table brought him back to the present. 

“Ehm, I don’t know”, he answered lamely and shrugged. He really wished that he had done the reading homework. 

“Phil?” She asked and turned to the black-haired boy seated at the front.

Phil looked up from his paper. “Is it because of the left side being responsible for the circulatory system?”

“Yes exactly!” Miss Wade replied excitedly. She walked in front of the board and started writing eagerly. 

Anatomy was surprisingly okay. Dan had never really been much of a sciency-person, but between physics and biology, he would choose biology every day. Except for last year when they had been taught about different soils. That had been tedious. 

The bell rang and Phil went past his table to get to the exit. 

“Hey, Phil!” Dan said and the boy turned around. His gaze was fixed in the floor so his fringe was blocking his eyes from view. “I guess we should get started on our French project?”

Phil scratched the back of his neck and nodded. 

“If you want we could study at my house tomorrow”, said Dan while he put down his books in his bag and pulled the zip shut. 

“Yes, sure”, said Phil and gave him a shy smile tugging his hand around the straps of his backpack. 

“Great!” Dan exclaimed as he put the bag on his shoulders and began to walk out of the classroom. “If you give me your number I can just text you the address.”

And then it was decided and for some reason, Dan couldn’t get rid of the jittery feeling he had gotten. A feeling he had no idea why he had. Phil was just a dorky guy, who wore a galaxy backpack and doodled silly sketches. Why was he so nervous?

-

Dan was startled awake by his mum opening his bedroom door with an unnecessary strong force. 

“Your friend is here”, she said and looked a bit shocked by him not being up yet. “Dan, what have I said about being up late? You completely mess up your sleeping schedule in one day. How do you even manage that?”

Dan ignored her question and took a quick look at the watch. Twelve. It was perhaps a bit earlier than he had expected Phil to arrive but not extremely so. He laid down again and put the duvet above his head. 

“Dan”, he heard his mum’s stern voice say. “Your friend’s waiting.”

“Could you please entertain him for like five minutes? I really need to shower” he said as he smelled his armpits and grimaced. 

His mum just sighed in response and then he heard his door shut with a click. 

When Dan arrived downstairs ten minutes later, dressed in a grey sweater and damp hair. Phil was sitting by the kitchen table having awkward small talk with his mother. Dan felt bad for him, it was always a tad embarrassing talking to people’s parents, especially without them present. But at the same time, Dan hadn’t wanted to greet him smelling like Shrek. 

Ten minutes later they were seated on Dan’s bed, with their school supplies spread out around them. 

“How do you say divided in French?” Phil asked not taking his eyes of the Wikipedia article on the screen in front of him. The light the screen omitted gave his already pale face an almost vampire-like skin tone. He was probably one of those people who got burned by being in the sun for two minutes, Dan thought to himself.

“Literally have no idea”, said Dan. He was already tired of French. He had always considered himself alright at it and had never actually bothered to do any of the homework. That was until he had realized that the people at his new school were a lot better than in his old one. He then understood that he had gone from being one of the better students to one of the worst. 

Suddenly Phil leaped up from the bed and began to look through his Wii collection. “You have a Wii in your bedroom? That’s awesome.”

Dan went to stand next to him. “Wanna play Mario Kart?”

Phil just smiled excitedly and nodded rapidly. 

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you though.”

Dan ended up winning all the games they played, and almost felt sorry for him. At one point Phil had even thrown a textbook at him in frustration. Dan had just laughed at him in response. 

The homework laid unfinished on the bed. The room was instead filled with Dan’s loud laugh and Phil’s silent giggles. 

“I like your poster”, commented Phil and pointed towards the picture of Matt Bellamy on the wall, as they waited for the game to load. 

“You like Muse?” Dan asked with a raised eyebrow. 

Phil just nodded in response.

“Oh, Phil I like you more and more”, said Dan as he pressed start. “I mean first you suck at video games and then you like my favorite band”. 

Phil just nudged him in his stomach. 

-

Phil had left an hour later, both of them had been reluctant for him to go. Perhaps they had lingered a bit too long at the front door. 

On Monday Phil had completely avoided him. Dan had seen him in the corridor but as they got eye contact he had almost been running away. He got a heavy feeling in his stomach and the paranoia started to kick in. Perhaps he had seen one of his binder in his room and decided that he didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. 

But Dan was quick to dismiss that thought, if he had seen something Dan would have noticed. He seemed perfectly happy when they said goodbye. He decided to bring up the subject with Louise.

“Do you know who Phil Lester is?” he whispered as his pen was scratching on the graph paper.

“Yeah, he was in my English class last year”, Louise said as she put her hair up in a pony-tail. “Shy but really sweet”.

“He’s in my French class, and we’re doing a project together”, Dan began as he draws a straight line between the dots in his graph. “We worked on it last Saturday at my house, but now he seems to be ignoring me.” 

Louise studied him silently, her eyes looking pensive. 

“I don’t know what I did wrong.” Dan finished quietly and looked up from his paper. 

Louise must have seen his vulnerability and gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sure it’s nothing Dan, he’s probably just a bit nervous. You should just text him, and see what he says.”

“Yeah”, Dan replied distractedly. 

-

At lunch Dan decided to follow Louise advice.

 _hi do you want to meet up tmrw and dinish the project?_  
(12.03)

That would have to do, not too formal not too casual. Until he realized the typo. 

_finish*_  
(12.03)

 _unless you want to dinish whatever that means_  
(12.04)

-

He anxiously looked at his phone throughout the day. He even got in trouble with the drama teacher yanked it out of his hands with a promise that she would return it by the end of the lesson.

“Texting someone?” Tyler asked with a wink.

Dan rolled his eyes. “No, just bored.”

“Whatever you say”, Tyler replied with a smirk playing on his lips. “But those red cheeks say otherwise.”

Dan hand self-consciously touched his cheeks.

-

He had almost accepted that Phil hated him when he was turning off the light for the evening. That was when his phone buzzed. He nearly sprinted of the bed and removed it from his charger.

 **Phil**  
_Yes we can dinish it after school_  
(00.01)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry guys! I know I haven't updated in a long time and that was mostly because I didn't know what direction I wanted this fic to go. I had actually almost given up when I logged in and saw that I had new reviews and 666 hits (which must be a sign). So I'm really sry it took so long but here it is anyway...

It wasn’t until Dan saw Phil waiting outside the school library he realized how utterly stupid he had been. In short, Phil looked terrible. He had with bags under his eyes and his already pale skin and somehow gotten even paler, something Dan would have doubted to be possible before. Dan had made everything about himself, that he had done something and that Phil was upset with him, without realizing that Phil had his own share of problems. 

Not wanting to make Phil uncomfortable he walked towards him and greeted him without mentioning that he currently looked like a dead man walking. Phil’s face did light up when he saw him, something that Dan took as a good sign.

They took a table in a quiet corner of the library. Not many people where there, but he could spot a few students by the nearby computers and hear the clicking sound the keyboards made. 

“Should we split the work?” Phil asked as he put his backpack on the chair. “Like you write about the food and I write about the history?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Dan answered and sat down and put his laptop on the table. When Phil was busy reading, Dan glanced over at the other boy. His eyes seemed unfocused and his hair uncharacteristically messy. Something was wrong, but Dan didn’t know the guy well enough without feeling that he would be intruding. Dan had no idea what to do in a situation like this, should he just leave it? Or should he ask him about it and come off as a bit of a stalker. 

They did their work in silence and got a lot done, which made up for the time they lost in front of Mario kart last time. It also turned out that they were living near each other, which resulted in them doing the classic awkward move when you say goodbye and then end up walking in the same direction. 

It was chilly and the wind seeped right through their clothes as they walked side by side on the sidewalk. The silence stretched out for a few moments before Dan felt like he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly and gave Phil a look of concern. Phil’s gaze stayed fixed on the asphalt. 

“Yeah, I’m fine really,” Phil said slowly and a sigh escaped his lips. “Just tired that’s all”.

Dan didn’t buy it. He had used that excuse too many times to his mum before he came out to her. But perhaps he was tired but not because of lack of sleep but because he was tired of living in a body that didn’t feel like his.

“Are you sure? Because it’s okay not to be alright, you know” Dan said and closed the zip on his jacket. “I understand if you don’t feel comfortable with sharing it with me, but I would listen if you did.”

A small smile spread across Phil’s lips and his eyes met his. “Thanks, but it’s fine really.”

Dan decided to leave it at that even if he wasn’t entirely convinced. 

\---

He had decided to keep an eye on Phil for now on. It didn’t take long for Dan to recognize a pattern. Every time he saw him, he was always reading his school books or holding a pen with a sketchbook in front of him. He never saw him interacting with any of the other students. Phil was lonely.

When he sat with Tyler and Louise in the cafeteria he decided that he could change that. 

Louise and Tyler were as ordinarily having a lively discussion about some weird subject. Today it was about pineapple on pizza. The never ending debate. Dan was just glad that they had dropped the Laura or Yanny debate. It had ended with Louise being so frustrated that she kicked him in the shin. 

“Pineapple is a fruit” Louise explained calmly as if she was talking to a toddler. “Fruit plus pizza equals a mistake”.

“Well, if we continue with that logic tomato on pizza wouldn’t work either because tomato is a fruit”, Tyler said and smirked.

Louise inhaled as to make a counter-argument. But Dan was quicker.

“Don’t you two ever shut up!” he exclaimed as he raised his hands in the air.

Tyler and Louise just laughed at him. It seemed like the debates they had always ended as suddenly as they started. Dan had yet to see them get angry with each other over something that had lasted longer than five minutes. Dan tried to never get involved in their debates, partly because he really didn’t care but mostly because it was just fun to watch them. It seemed odd that Tyler and Louise had only been friends for a year because they argued like siblings.

“Moving on to the important stuff, is it okay if I invite Phil Lester to the coffee shop today?” Dan asked and then took a sip from his glass of water. “We have a project together in French class and he seems really cool.”

Naturally they both agreed. He didn’t really expect anything different either but he wanted to make sure. After all, they hadn’t known each other for that long, he didn’t want to just invite anyone to hang out with them without asking. Dan just hoped he wouldn’t scare Phil off with the invite. They didn’t know each other that well either. 

\----

To Dan’s relief Phil did accept the invite and they decided to meet at 6. By the time Dan was heading out the door, the rain was pouring down. This time he decided to take his mom’s advice on wearing a jacket.

He took his unlocked his bike that was standing by the car. The seat was wet so he used the sleeve from his jacket to soak up the water. By the time Dan had reached the coffee shop he was soaking wet. A year ago he would have feared the “hobbit hair” that it would follow but he had since long ago embraced the curls.

He had thought that he would be there early, but apparently, they were all there waving from the window. Dan entered and took a seat opposite Phil and next to Tyler who had a cup of steaming coffee in front of him.

“Fancy seeing you here, never thought you would show up”, Louise said rolling her eyes.

Dan just looked at her scrutinizing. He looked at the display on his phone. “What are you on about? I’m just five minutes late.”

“I’ve been waiting here twenty-five minutes”, She replied and took a bite from her croissant. 

Dan took off his soaking jacket and hung it at the backrest of his chair. “Yeah, and twenty of those minutes are your own problem.”

It was easy to see who had arrived first by their level of wetness. Louise's hair was completely dry, whereas Tyler’s was slightly damp. Dan and Phil’s both looked like drenched cats. Dan observed Phil and thought that he did look more put together that he had during the last week. He did appear to be smiling in response to their conversation, and when Dan greeted him he had gotten a shy hello and a smile. Dan took this as a good sign. Perhaps it had been a good decision to invite him. 

“I’m going to buy some Earl Gray”, Dan said and then turned to Phil. “Don’t you want anything?”

“I kind of forgot my wallet.”

“I can pay for you”, Dan said as he stood up from his chair. “What do you want?”

“You sure?” Phil asked sounding as if Dan had just offered to pay a plane ticket. 

Dan waved his hand in response. 

“Just coffee, thanks.”

It turned out that Dan hadn’t needed to worry about it being awkward or forced. Phil seemed to get along well with both Louise and Tyler. When they were talking about weird things they did as kids, Phil seemed to have the most stories to tell. They all felt bad for his parents when he told them that he used to stare at them while they were sleeping. 

It had all been going smoothly until they were all saying their goodbyes. Louise was giving Phil a hug. Dan guessed her hand must have brushed against something.

“DID I JUST TOUCH YOUR PENIS?”

Well, almost everything had gone smoothly.


End file.
